Exactly Ian......
Another contribution to the domestic economy was the hen pen. (Time I bumped Wilfred Spencer's short story!) (As I write this I can't get the exposure of Just Eat and Deliveroo on TV last night, such a contrast.) Have a look at Fred Inman's evidence in the LTP on his father's activities before and during the war, he was producing eggs on a large scale. It's no coincidence that in the immediate post war years the Craven region was a hotbed of poultry breeding and sales of day-old chicks. An interesting sideline was that the art of sexing the chicks so that the males could be discarded was imported from Japan and adopted round here very early. One of my mates was one of the first to learn this and he was in great demand. (Funny thing was that he was a very big man with hands like shovels!) If you go back to the newspapers of the time you will find that breeding and rearing 'fancy' breeds was widespread and there were many poultry shows where the prizes were hotly contested.

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

This is a Bavarian snow plough but it's exactly the same as the one that used to be stored on the lay by near the Lanehead pub on High Lane. It was used by BUDC to clear the roads until as late as the 1950s and was towed by the Council tipper wagon. Jack Platt told me that when there was snow and frost the piece workers on the bank at Upper Hill quarries were laid off as the stone wouln't split properly. They used to set on for the Council snow clearing and got better pay than they did at the quarry. Every cloud has a silver lining!

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

I forget his name but the bloke who was foreman on the BUDC road gang was a big man with a black moustache who went by the nickname Ticker I think. He told me that BUDC ploughed the road up to Standing Stone Gate and one morning they went up to the Fanny Grey, hooked up to the plough in the lay-by and set off up the road. It was only when he turned the wagon round at Standing Stone Gate that he realised they had lost the plough somewhere on High Lane! They had to go back and look for it. Luckily they were the only people using the road at that hour.
He also told me, and I confirmed this with my ports of call later, that for some obscure reason the Old Gisburn Track from Pasture Head up to Weets House was the responsibility of the North Yorkshire Rural County and as it was an outlier they seldom saw the plough and had to look after the road themselves. I think it was in 1983 when the boundary changes were made and that solved the problem as the road then became the responsibility of Pendle and Lancashire.

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

It was Ticker and not Tricker...... My memory was false.
Still thinking about road surfaces....

This fan pattern of small setts in Newtown (The paviors called the pattern Durex) is different than any others in the town. They are granite setts and so were imported. I was once told that in about 1900 when it was done it was one of the first roads in Barlick to be paved and that the paviors were French.
Billy Brooks could remember it being done. He said that Station Road was done at the same time and that the carters hated the surface because it didn't give as good a grip as the dry macadam roads.
It must have been sometime after this that the Salterforth quarries started producing millions of larger local setts, there was a big export trade to East Lancashire towns, particularly Burnley. See Jack Platt in the LTP for the account of the boats that took them to Burnley before the advent of motorised transport.

These setts in Hill Street are Upper Hill setts. Incidentally, Hill Street is the only one I know in Barlick that is paved with concrete.

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!

That's him! Well done! Straight into the archive. He was a cheerful bloke and I have an idea he loved his job.

So did these blokes I'll bet. Night soil men working in Barlick in 1982. They were emptying the commode of the lady who lived round the corner who was bedfast on the ground floor. The commode bucket was emptied into the hopper on the left hand corner of the vehicle and sucked into the main tank by vacuum..

Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net

"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!